The Best Books I Read in 2025

I have such a struggle in putting together my annual list of the best of the best books I read each year. No way I can get this post up before the second half of January.

I comb through all the books I bolded in each quarter’s list of the books I read and puzzle over which of the books on the list meet all four of my best-of-the-best criteria. As I do every year, this year I had far more books that met three of the four requirements but couldn’t quite make it to four. (I’ve listed them below as “runners up.”) The fourth criterion—more on that below—is always a hard one to meet.

Scroll down for my criteria and for links to my quarterly reading lists, which include all the bolded items and many more great reads.

The Best of the Best Books I Read in 2025

I’ve listed these books in the order I finished them this time, rather than by last-name alphabetical order.

• Wellness, by Nathan Hill

• The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray, by Walter Mosley

• The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother), by Rabih Alameddine

• Pomegranate, by Helen Elaine Lee

Runners Up for Best 2025 Reads

As with the above list, I placed these books in the order I finished reading them. Some of the authors have compound names, so this organization felt more straightforward.

• The Devotion of Suspect X, by Keigo Higashino

• Girlfriend on Mars, by Deborah Willis

• They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, by Horace Mc Coy

• Where the Axe is Buried, by Ray Nayler

• When We Were Real, by Daryl Gregory

• rekt, by Alex Gonzalez

• Old School Indian, by Aaron John Curtis

• Extremophile, by Ian Green

• Metallic Realms, by Lincoln Michel

• The Sons of El Rey, by Alex Espinoza

• The Man Who Saw Seconds, by Alexander Boldizar

• A Short Stay in Hell, by Steven L. Peck

• The Tusks of Extinction, by Ray Nayler

• The Test, by Sylvain Neuvel

• The Usual Desire to Kill, by Camilla Barnes

• Sky Daddy, by Kate Folk

• Leverage, by Amran Gowani

• Vigilance, by Robert Jackson Bennett

• The Correspondent, by Virginia Evans

• Show Don’t Tell, by Curtis Sittenfeld

• Same as It Ever Was, by Claire Lombardo

• The Elementals, by Michael McDowell

• The Theory of Bastards, by Audrey Schulman

My Decision Criteria

I use the following decision criteria as I make my selections:

• I enjoyed the writing at the line level. (This does not mean the writing is flowery or fancy or difficult to read. Not at all.)

• The book gave me new perspectives and ideas to consider.

• The overall whole of the book stuck with me over the long term.

• The book generated an emotional, not just an intellectual response.

The books I placed in my best-of-the-best category met all four criteria. If a book didn’t meet all four criteria, I didn’t put it on the list. Not even if I loved in on other levels and would highly recommend it.

The fourth criterion on the above list holds back most books from making it to my best-of-the-best category. Eliciting an emotional response is a tall order, after all. Also worthwhile to note that emotional responses come for some and not for others with any given text. Take that into account.

My Quarterly Reading Lists for 2025

Here are links to the full lists of the books I read in each quarter of 2025. Each list has my favorites of the quarter in bold.

You’ll find many, many more wonderful reads on these lists than I had room to share in this best-of-the-best post.

• The Books I Read in Q1 2025

• The Books I Read in Q2 2025

• The Books I Read in Q3 2025

• The Books I Read in Q4 2025

My Best-of-the-Best Books from Previous Years

I’ve put together these lists for several years now. If you’d like to see what I listed in previous years, start with my list of the best of the best books I read in 2024.

From that post, you’ll find links to the lists from all the previous years I’ve put out these lists. (Quite a few!)